 Coming up, we found Philae. Rockets successfully launched. Virgin Galactic flies again. And I talk with AJ Piplika, the Chief Operating Officer of Generation Orbit. Stay tuned. Tomorrow begins right now! And welcome to tomorrow episode 9.28. Very glad to have you here for September 10th, 2016. Let's go ahead and get started by looking at our Patreon people. These are our Tomorrow Patreon Premier members. These folks have given us $10 or more per episode that we do of this show. Now, these folks get access to everything that you can imagine. They get access to our Slack channel, early access to the show, and after dark, immediately occurring after the end of the show, they get everything that you can imagine. And if you would like to help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow, please consider going on over to Patreon.com slash T-M-R-O. Now, boy, are we busy here in the studio today, because not only have you got me, Jared Head, you've also got our space pod correspondent from Down Under. Finally here in California today, Lisa, very glad to have you here. We've also got Space Mike over there from the Mythicalons of Arizona. And then on the end of the table, we've got the lovely, the talented, the beautiful, the not-my-wife Carrie Ann. We're all very, very excited to be here today, especially because you're here, Lisa. You've made the long and arduous journey to be here today. I made the 18-hour plane ride to be here today. Oh, my gosh. I don't even want to think about having to sit in a seat for 18 hours. So, instead of thinking about that, let's go ahead and get this show started. And of course, Mike, we always started off with the launch, so please take us away. That's right. Well, we had a couple launches last week, and the first one we wanted to talk about was an Indian launch, launching their geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle, Mark II, on Thursday, September 8th. Let's check out the launch footage. Four, three, two, one. L40 ignited. Yes. Yes. L40 performance normal. I just wanted to make a lift off from the launch back. Sanda, Tariqe Se. Siaan Nehap Niyantra Suruki. Puranasthal Kachora. Paravasna Niyath Nath Pajatahue. This was the first flight of the GSLV Mark II for 2016, and the GSLV rocket is kind of a unique rocket. The core stage of the first stage is actually a solid rocket motor, and the side boosters are actually liquid-fueled rockets, and it's very interesting. Like I said, this was the first flight for 2016 and the 10th flight overall of the GSLV between the Mark I and Mark II versions. Now, besides with this, the whole thing with this special launch is that it had the first operational flight of India's own cryogenic upper stage. And with their cryogenic upper stage, it's actually the fourth time that they've ever flown it, but the first time that they tried to fly their own cryogenic upper stage ended in failure back in 2001. And the Mark I vehicle was using Russian-made upper stages for a while with varying levels of success and failure, but with this, they are going to be using from the Mark II version on their own cryogenic upper stage, and the reason that they're considering this the first operational flight of this is that all the previous, the last two flights that were successful with their cryogenic upper stage were considered test flights and had additional objectives during the flight. But this particular flight was the first time where ISRO, the Indian Space Research Organization, was solely focused on delivering the payload. And the payload for this launch was the INSAT-3DR weather observation satellite. The INSAT-3DR spacecraft is actually a replacement for India's previous INSAT-3D spacecraft. And it will be observing the atmosphere over land and sea as well as aid in search and rescue operations and disaster relief. This is going to be providing services over India, as well as parts of the Middle East and even parts of eastern Africa. So very cool that they're going to be able to have this service up and running, and they're going to be having even more launches for the rest of the year. And I'm very happy that they're able to have a fully operational GSLV Mark II. And something else that's interesting about this is with the operational cryogenic upper stage, their next big rocket, which is the GSLV Mark III. And even though it's in the same family, it's a very different vehicle from the Mark I and Mark II versions. Now that they have the data that they need from this version of a cryogenic upper stage, they can move forward with creating the upper stage for that larger GSLV Mark III rocket and hopefully begin operational flights of that very soon. So congratulations to everyone over at ISRO for this successful launch. Yeah, nothing quite like a homegrown rocket finally reaching its drive. So that is just some fantastic stuff to see from India. The funny thing about the ISRO launches that it always throws me off a little bit is the plus one, plus two, plus three, which Hans in the chat room says that he absolutely loves. I like it too. But it throws me off, I always feel like okay, let's go. What's taking so long? I always feel like there's something wrong there. Yeah, because we're accustomed to hearing it during engineering flights and things like that. Test flights, not actual flights of the vehicle. But still, that's just... No, it's great. Don't be wrong. It's another cool thing that shows the subtle differences between each country space program. Totally. It's some really cool stuff. We're so used to hearing the three, two, one lift off. Inspirational paragraph. Plus one, plus two, I think it would really be as noticeable. All right, very, very cool. Well, speaking of a very interesting thing happening in space, Lisa, they've done something on the International Space Station that's never been done before. They have sequenced DNA in space. So American astronaut Kate Rubens, she's on station right now, and she has sequenced DNA. And she did that using a really, really tiny DNA sequencer. They're about the size of a Snickers bar. So it's really small. Usually DNA sequences are about the size of a microwave, if not bigger. And the cool thing about that is that she was able to sequence mouse, bacterial, and viral DNA. And that's cool because that can be sequenced really, really quickly because it plugs into a USB port of a laptop on the space station. And the cool reason for doing that is if we know the DNA sequence of a sample in space, then you can use that to diagnose an astronaut if they're sick. So you can find out what bacteria is making them sick so you know which antibiotics that you can give them. And you can also, if there's an experiment on station where you need to know the results of your experiment in real time, you can do that on station without having to wait to, say, put your sample back into a dragon and bring it back down to Earth, and then wait for that to be transported to your lab to the sequencing so you're saving time. But the really cool thing is that they want to use this mini ion. That's the name of the technology. And they want to use that to maybe go and search for life on other planets because it's so small, it doesn't weigh a lot, and it can be plugged into a laptop. So if they're able to do that, they could test samples on, for example, Mars and use that to see if there's life on Mars with something as simple as the size of a snickers bar. Wow, that is awesome. That's very interesting. That's really cool. It reminds me of, like, the Star Trek, like... Tricorder? Thank you. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that, of like, oh, this is what's wrong. There you go. Totally handheld device. Super simple. Very, very nice. Well, thank you, Lisa. That was really, really cool. And speaking of the search for the makeup of life, say, Mike, we've got a launch that happened this week which actually may help bring us clues as to why life may be here on Earth. That's right. The Osiris-Rex mission, which is the asteroid sample return mission, which is one of NASA's new frontiers mission, began its seven-year round-trip journey to take a sample from an asteroid, asteroid Bennu, and return it to Earth. And this launch also occurred on Thursday, the same day as the Indian GSLV launch. And this was the United Launch Alliance Atlas V that delivered the Osiris-Rex. Let's check out the launch footage for that. Three, two, one. And liftoff of Osiris-Rex, its seven-year mission, to boldly go to the asteroid Bennu and back. The launch agent had to personally show it to the family. He should be chambered personally, but we're going to wrap up. This launch took place on Thursday, September 8 at 2305 Coordinated Universal Time from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. This was the launch complex that was right next door to SpaceX's SLC-40 and didn't suffer any damage from that. Now, this Atlas V version is the 411 configuration. It's rarely used. You can see a great shot there. It only has one solid rocket booster on the side of it. And the whole 411 thing is for a four-meter payload fairing, the one solid rocket booster, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage. And with two engine burns, the upper stage of this, the Centaur upper stage, delivered the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft into a Earth departure velocity and entered into a heliocentric orbit, or rather in orbit around the Sun instead of around the Earth's sphere of influence. Now, the spacecraft will perform an Earth flyby next year to get a gravity assist in order to rendezvous with Bennu with less needs to use its own propellant, but it will be using its own propellant for several different correction maneuvers. And hopefully it will be arriving at Bennu in 2018 if all the maneuvers to rendezvous with it are done correctly. And once there, OSIRIS-REx will spend two years at Asteroid Bennu. And Asteroid Bennu is a relatively slow spinning asteroid, which makes it a really ideal candidate for sample collection. And the really cool thing about this is that if it's successful, they will be able to return to Earth hopefully in 2023, and a return capsule on the spacecraft will return to Earth, and OSIRIS-REx will go back into a solar orbit. And personally, I hope that NASA is able to have a use for OSIRIS and have some sort of extended mission after the asteroid sample has returned to Earth. And with this launch, the entire launch was successful and the spacecraft is healthy, and hopefully this seven-year journey was going to be entirely successful. And congratulations to United Launch Alliance for this successful launch, and good luck to NASA for not only keeping this mission a little bit under budget, but doing this in a timely manner as well. So good news all around. Yes, and as our chat room was pointing out to us, this was launched on the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the original series being aired for the first time. So go figure that, you know, 50 years after that, we are boldly going to something a little bit bigger than the Empire State Building. So very, very cool with that there. So speaking of these little things that we have orbiting around the sun, guess what happened? We found Philae. So everybody probably remembers Philae, which was a part of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. It's basically a, I guess for lack of better size comparison, a dryer-sized space probe that was dropped from Rosetta to the surface of the comet that it's orbiting or 67P, whichever you prefer. Unfortunately, as you can see with the animation using actual data here, the systems that were supposed to keep Philae attached to the surface of the comet failed to activate and it kind of, you know, went off spinning and it ended up floating and flying around all over the surface of the comet. Now, they did not, they kept in contact with it for three days before its batteries ran out of power. They were hoping that it could go longer because it does have solar panels on board, but it eventually died simply because it landed in a crevice and it was shaded and it was basically like everything that you could imagine going wrong with it kind of did go wrong. So unfortunately, it only worked for three days. They did get in touch with it again back in June and July of 2015, but it was basically just pings from Philae saying, hey, I'm on. Not really any data that was useful, but Philae still did accomplish all of its scientific goals. So what they were doing is they were hunting for Philae with the cameras that are on board of Rosetta because they sort of had an idea of where Philae should have been, but they didn't really know where Philae was simply because it's really difficult to try to find a gray space probe on the surface of a gray comet. So, so... Yeah, it turns out really difficult. So, one of the things that they did is they took extremely high resolution imagery of the surface and they tried to see where it would have been and lo and behold, just earlier this week, guess what they did? They found it. So there's little Philae sitting sort of on its side on the surface of the comet there. It was pretty easy to find because it turns out there was a red box right around it. No, I'm just kidding about that. But as you can see here, we've got this sort of overall huge area on that one end of the comet there and then we've got a wide shot for context of where Philae is and then a close-up image of Philae right there. And that was found on September 2nd and this image was taken 2.7 kilometers above the surface to find Philae in its final resting place. And you can see it's tipped over on its side and overall not exactly how you want your lander to be on the surface if you can. And they were even able to determine what instruments were pointed in what direction so they could figure out the orientation of Philae. So that was a very, very cool thing that they were able to do. Now Rosetta will be landing on the surface of the comet on September 30th. They're going to attempt to land it. Rosetta was not designed to land on the surface of the comet. So we'll see what happens. I'm pretty excited. They're going to be doing that later this month. So pretty cool stuff. So Lisa, there's something very interesting happening not too far from us at the studio of tomorrow. A little bit closer to home. Yes, quite a bit. So Virgin Galactic had a captive carry test flight of their spaceship to spacecraft. So you guys might remember that back in 2014, October 31st 2014 to be specific the VSS Enterprise was lost in an accident but the new spaceship to spacecraft, the VSS Unity performed a captive carry test flight on September 8th. And because the captive carry test flight, that meant that the spaceship too was never detached from its carrier aircraft, the White Knight too. So it was attached the whole time through launch, the testing and the landing. They reached an altitude of 12 kilometers and for you guys that still use Imperial, that's 50,000 feet. Because some people still use Imperial. But the test flight lasted for three hours and 43 minutes and it allowed them to test their flight operation procedures and other things like testing the airflow around the spacecraft while it's still flying underneath its carrier craft. It was piloted, the spaceship to spacecraft was piloted by Mark Stuckey and Dave McKay and White Knight too was piloted by Mike Masuki and Todd Erickson with Flight Engineer, Wes Passal. So now that they've done this successful carrier flight the next step is to analyze all the data from all the different sensors and stuff that they had flying on those two airships for the test. They also want to look at how their procedures were going, but most of all they want to make sure that everything is fine so that eventually they could maybe do another carrier flight and then move on to free flights and then finally maybe in six months or more move on to carrying passengers. So Virgin Galactic is doing great things. Yes, glad to have them back too. As we like to say here tomorrow all ships rise with the tide so it's good that we're getting a lot of people back into suborbital space flight. We're very glad to have them back. Alright so I want to talk about up in orbit a little bit here with a spacecraft known as Sentinel-1A European Space Agency. This is a story that I've been wanting to talk about for a couple weeks but we've been a little too busy to talk about it so might as well talk about it now which is that the probe appears to have been impacted by something while it was in orbit around the Earth. Now this is an animation of Sentinel-1A being launched back in 2014 and the ground controllers kind of noticed something interesting that happened while it was on orbit which is that there was a dip in power generation from Sentinel-1 solar arrays at 1707 Coordinated Universal Time on August 23rd. They also noticed that there was a small change in its orbit which is about 700 kilometers above the surface of the Earth and they also noticed that there was a small change in the orientation of the vehicle so its attitude was different than where it should have been at. Now this is a radar satellite so it has to be pointed down at the Earth for a very specific reason so it's very very important for its orientation to be set correctly so they were very confused as to what happened. Now back in 2014 what is so cool about this spacecraft is that they have two cameras on board that were basically there which only their only job for these cameras to do was to take images of the solar arrays to make sure that they had been deployed correctly so that's all that they did. So the engineers said well we've noticed that there's been a loss of power from one of our solar arrays in the amount that it gives us let's just go ahead and turn on those cameras and see if there's anything different so they turned on the cameras, they took images and lo and behold they found a damaged area in the solar panel about 40 centimeters across and you could see that image on your left there is right after solar array deployment back in 2014 and then the one on the right there is the image with the red arrow pointing at the damage there. Now engineers are analyzing the trajectory to see if this impactor was either a micrometeoroid so something from outside of the influence of the Earth or if Sentinel-1A actually got hit by a piece of space junk so but they estimate the size of the impactor was about 5 millimeters so very very small for those of you who are a little more imperially inclined that's about a fifth of an inch so that's really really small but of course when you're in space you gotta move really really fast so even things 5 millimeters in size have a tremendous amount of energy. Now this is not going to affect Sentinel-1A it's perfectly fine it's going to be still operational and everything's going to work excellent for it and it's okay it's just that you know it got hit by something while it was on orbit and this is a really rare thing because this hasn't happened too much so this is potentially going to allow us to study what happens to vehicles when they're on orbit and they get hit by a piece of something or whatever it may have been so we'll stay tuned for more news on that one. Even though it's not damaged. Go ahead Lisa sorry. Even though it had been damaged because it's Sentinel-1A I believe with these Sentinel satellites they come in pairs so there's a 1A and a 1B so even if 1A was damaged the way that they've designed that mission is that 1B could have taken over the job. Exactly yeah it was just very convenient for them to have two satellites getting double the data over half the time with the earth so yeah so that's a really good point which is that they do have Sentinel-1B to help them out. It was really a testament to how well the spacecraft was designed considering the potential for how much energy and speed could have been involved with this potential impact and I'm not even sure exactly what caused this damage but the solar panels if it was an impact didn't shatter and didn't disable the spacecraft completely it just has a dip in power by shutting off certain instruments or having power rationing I guess and having certain instruments on at certain times and stuff the spacecraft can still be fully operational so that's just really amazing to me that even if there was a really bad impact like that the rest of the solar panel is still working it's just a dip in power from that side so that's really cool to me. Yeah and the chat room is asking us if the whole of a US or Russian space station has ever been punctured due to space debris and it hasn't there have been impacts like one of the most well-known one was on one of the early shuttle missions something actually hit one of the cockpit windows and shattered a really big part of it which I'm sure that was really fun to look at throughout the mission. Also I know the cupola on the International Space Station has some micrometeoroid damage to it as well that they've noticed One of the solar panels on the ISS as well had a large puncture hole a couple years back I'm not going to do all the details now but yes that's true as well and then also in 2009 an Iridium communications satellite and an old dead Russian Cosmos satellite actually directly collided and it was the first I guess you would call it energetic kinetic collision accidentally performed by two spacecraft That's a lot of debris Yeah the closing velocity of that was something like 15 kilometers per second it was just ridiculous So yeah there's a lot of stuff up there and hopefully they'll be cleaning it up sooner rather than later So I believe that's it for our news today so what we are going to do now is we are going to go to a break and when we come back we are going to have Ben interviewing AJ Piplica the COO of generation orbit this is going to be a pretty interesting one because these guys are developing small launchers and we are going to listen in and it's going to be pretty darn good so we'll see you right after this break we've always looked to the stars they guide us give us comfort help us find our way we see ourselves out there when we look up it inspires us we long for something we don't yet know we yearn to go there so we venture forth we choose to go to the moon in this decay and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard because that goes to serve to organize the ego is landed after man the exploration of space will go ahead whether we join in it or not many think we stopped exploring but we know our journey didn't end we've only just begun come with us and explore tomorrow before we get started with our interview segment I did want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who have been up to make this specific segment of this episode happen these are people who have contributed $10 or more to this specific episode and we've also got our tomorrow producers these are people who have contributed $5 or more to this specific episode to find out how you can help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com slash t-m-r-o this is going to be an exciting one we were talking before the show about how we're having generation orbit on and not a whole lot of people even in the tomorrow studios really know who generation orbit is so we've got AJ Piplika the chief operating officer of generation orbit AJ welcome to tomorrow thanks for having me on so who is generation orbit what are you guys doing so we're building small air launch systems for small payloads right now we're working primarily on a vehicle called go launcher 1 it's a single stage liquid rocket that's launched from a Gulfstream 3 aircraft and it's primarily designed for hypersonic flight testing we're also operating a small lear jet with a pod underneath the wing and we utilize this for some testing of air launch subsystems as well as a platform for stem education so every flight that we have of the go FET we like to have a student group basically put together a small CubeSat that they fly and then operate as though it were in flight so you guys have been around for a little while now how did you guys get started doing some of these small sets and small launchers sure so yeah go has been around for about 5 years we're a city area of spaceworks enterprises you may be familiar with spaceworks as the company that puts together a small set market forecast every year so as you can imagine we had a our eye on the small set launch market for quite some time even before we started the company but we saw a real opportunity to put together the kind of two skill sets one being knowledge of the small set launch market and then the other being experience in a number of air launch systems over the past so we saw a real niche where we thought air launch could be a really good good application for overall small set launch vehicles I think the key thing here is you're doing this today right so the go flight experiments the go FET is launching right now today so if I wanted to send something up on that today I could yeah absolutely so we've flown it three times most recent flight was in December of last year and yeah we do that for commercial customers as well as some of our own internal R&D efforts and then again with bringing in students as much as we can as well and then moving forward you've got additional plans above and beyond the go flight experiments test bed you've also got like you mentioned go launcher one what does go launcher one look like how is it different than what you've got today sure so go one it will be the first actual vehicle that we've designed and built in house that we're flying the go FET is an old electronic countermeasures pod that we've basically gutted the internals of but go one will be our first rocket system and we'll be using it to fly in the atmosphere at Mach numbers up to about six or eight so we're flying a rocket the way you would normally fly a scramjet and the reason for that is because we don't have very many operating scramjet vehicles to fly in these kinds of flight conditions so you know this is I kind of like putting it back to what X-15 did back in the fifties using a rocket vehicle as a test bed for hypersonic technologies so primarily focused on yeah flying high Mach number high dynamic pressure flight conditions and both of these are air launch systems and in the chat room someone basically asked what's the advantage of doing an air launch as opposed to a ground launch sure so you got a couple of things one obviously flexible basing so you can take your if it's designed correctly you can take your entire launch infrastructure out to any licensed spaceport around the globe and that's helpful whether you're flying a suborbital mission or even orbital getting at the different launch asmas and so forth obviously there's a performance advantage in launching above much of the appreciable atmosphere so you can put a larger expansion ratio on your booster engine so you get a little high performance ISP and thrust from that vehicle or from that system and I think at a small scale when we're talking about rockets that weigh less than 10,000 pounds or so there's a wide range of aircraft that can carry those kinds of weight so we have a number of Gulfstream 3's that are available to us to go fly the kind of missions that we need to do today and you kind of just you glossed over it pretty quickly but one of the advantages is of course you're higher up in the atmosphere and so you're essentially a two-stage launch system you look at a traditional rocket at stages and the engine on the second stage is actually designed slightly differently than the sea level engines to compensate for the lack of pressure and atmosphere but you don't necessarily have to have an entire rocket engine on the first stage you're using the airplane to get to that point yep exactly so yeah you can certainly consider the aircraft as the first stage or stage zero of the system so you know we're urban based we take the aircraft up to 35 to 40,000 feet and then we do a launch maneuver where we bring the flight path angle on the system up to about 35 or 40 degrees and then release the rocket so it's actually at about 40 degrees a flight path angle when the vehicle is released and that's actually a big driver especially when you're looking at Delta V's to orbit that initial flight path angle because ideally it wants to be somewhere up around 55 degrees but as much as you can get it really helps you don't have to turn as much with the rocket so Pegasus for example launched pretty close to zero so you'll see a pretty steep pull up that the vehicle has to do so using the aircraft for as much as we can we have big wings we use them so talking about Delta V for a moment or the change in velocity a newer pilot asks what's the Delta V benefit of a larger Gulfstream subsonic versus a supersonic big 21 oh well I don't know if I add the numbers off the top of my head but you do end up launching at a higher dynamic pressure generally as you go supersonic so the drag losses can be increased even though you're starting at a higher velocity so yeah I don't know if I have a number off the top of my head but yeah it should be a minimal benefit couple more questions from the chat room Lance asks what kind of cargo mass can you do and to what orbits okay so go launcher one is just a single stage suborbital vehicle so it doesn't actually go to orbit but it's designed for payloads of 300 to 1000 pounds the future orbital systems that we're looking at there's a number of them go to has been in our roadmap we're quite some time and that was sized for about 45 kilograms or 100 pounds to lower the orbit and then what kind of orbital planes can you do is it just pure low earth orbit what can you do that yeah one of the flexibilities of air launches that you can hit almost any azimuth both from the east coast or the west coast Hawaii is actually a very interesting place to launch from because you can go pretty much in any direction pretty close to the equator but yeah you know we don't have to go build up launch sites in different parts of the globe to get to different inclinations which is helpful you mentioned I think you had six flights already those weren't just test flights you've actually Space Vogue is asking have you actually launched payload thus far oh no no nothing yet so the first rocket powered flights of the go one will be about toward the end of next year early 2018 so I've got still a good deal of development to do we are in the process of a couple ground demonstration programs right now so about around this time next year we will have completed a ground demonstration of the fully integrated stage we will have also completed a captive carry and release flight testing of mock-up test articles that matches the mass properties and aerodynamic properties and then we'll put those two together and fly the real vehicle toward the end of next year now that's go one but the flight experiments test that has flown customers or is that only been it has yep yep yeah so we've had three of those we just don't it's just a fully captive test that doesn't launch anything from the aircraft and what do you go from here is are you eventually going to do a suborbital air launch systems or is that what's your kind of path forward from after go one yeah so there's a couple different paths that we can take obviously we're keeping a close eye on the small sat market it's going to be very interesting to see how that develops both on the supply and demand side in the coming years I think we're going to be in a good spot to join the fight there once go one is complete we have a number of designs ready to go for larger air launch systems that you'll see on our website but then you know with with go one being a hypersonic platform we're also going to be in a unique position to push the boundaries of atmospheric flight so we're very interested in looking at high speed point-to-point transportation of cargo and people once we kind of develop the technology that we need to get there so I think come around 2018 I think you'll see both orbital and high speed point-to-point vehicles in our future is this an example I think this is the go next vehicle is that even further in the future no that's what a one option for what a high speed point-to-point vehicle would look like this one uses combined cycle propulsion system so it uses turbines as well as scramjet propulsion to basically cruise Mach 6 or so to fly in the atmosphere altitude range from 90 90 to 100,000 feet or so Troubles asked why not use like a quadcopter or air balloon just go up as really high as you can and then release the rocket sure so what you don't get with a balloon launch is velocity or fly path angle so you got a good deal of altitude you also can't control the the launch point as well as you can with an aircraft you can pretty much hit a small box or window that you need to be in without being able to kind of get rid of disturbances from wind and so forth it's a little bit more difficult to do with the balloon quadcopters I think you're pretty limited in terms of the altitude that you can hit with those if we go back to the image of the go launcher one you can actually see it sitting underneath the wing there's only one underneath the wing and someone asked in the chat I apologize I forgot I've missed their name Space Mike has asked would you ever launch with one under each wing would you ever only launch one at a time okay so this guy is the the go FET so that one stays captive all the time the actual vehicles that we're flying are from a centerline hard point so there's only one yeah exactly right there so there's only one at a time what are your aircraft options besides the Gulf Streams that we're currently working towards and it's certainly possible for different applications to launch multiple vehicles from a single flight actually we don't have the images ready at least for the show but if you go to the website you can look at them but as you look at the images basically each launcher gets bigger and bigger as does the carrying the carrying airplane itself I assume that's just size of payload changing depending upon what you need the aircraft yeah exactly so with an air launch system you have an additional gross weight limit so ground launch rockets have a gross weight limit that's based on the thrust of the engines so we have that as well but we also have the carriage capacity of the aircraft to deal with so as you want to grow the size of your rocket and grow the size of your payload to orbit you need both more thrust and the ability to carry more weight on an aircraft I'm going to combine two questions from one person in the chat room from trebles which is which customers have shown the biggest interest as a government military education and have you had any interest from other countries as well mm-hmm yeah I think all of those so I think the primary interest from for the go one has come from the Air Force and NASA here in the states we've had some interest from Japan and also some commercial interest in that vehicle from a couple different companies who are looking at other hypersonic systems that they're developing for the orbital systems we've had interest from all over the world we had ten letters of intent signed for go two which is the orbital system that we mentioned that I think half of those are domestic and half of those are international so we're seeing a good deal of support from all over the world Peter asks looking into the future are you going to have cubes set to the moon capability or are you kind of focusing really on low earth orbit it depends on what the customer wants to do if we've got the delta V to take their particular payload mass on a particular trajectory we'd be happy to do it for them whether it's to the moon to an asteroid or anywhere else in the solar system assuming we have the performance the trajectories that they need Destructor 1701 has an interesting question and a topic that comes up more often than we like here in the US which is have you encountered any issues with itar the international trade arms regulations do you anticipate any show stoppers from a regulation standpoint no I mean we deal with itar on a regular basis just managing information management standpoint but as far as it being a hindrance to us I don't think we've had to deal with it in that regard all of our suppliers are domestic here in the US now when it comes to operating an air launch system outside of the United States we'll cross that bridge when we come to it but yeah for the most part so far everything's been fine so now the big questions which boils down to money to wicket asks you have big plans do you also have the funding to support them that's a big thing in new space is we all have a lot of really big ideas but finding them securing the money to actually execute on them is actually much harder than sometimes the idea itself absolutely so you know for us it's important to have a big vision that's why we got into this business and that's why most people do I think but we're also very realistic in terms of our you know the goals that we set in the near term so the steps that we put forward on go one are all funded and like I said the epi-t is operational and can fly whatever we needed to so that's why I'm not too kind of grandiose about the particular things we had coming in the future because there are a number of years down the road and the funding isn't there to back them up yet but we're very pleased with where we're going on go one right now we have a number of milestones to hit in the next year we're ready to do it and yeah now we just have to execute so similar on the financials Daman asks how much does it cost and that was kind of an open-ended question so I'm going to say if we wanted to fly payload tomorrow how much would it cost for a different size payloads well tomorrow so so the go epi-t tends to cost about 20k a flight so pretty low cost now that's again flying around in a captive carry pod underneath a lear jet but for the kinds of things that we need to do it works pretty well for us the go one the cost point there is about 2 million dollars per flight which is about half of kind of the current next best system that's available available for accessing these kinds of flight conditions that the go one is capable of you're looking kind of at that there's a huge we've talked about this a lot huge explosion in the small sat launcher market is that really where you're going to be focusing you talked a little bit about cargo and possibly a crew in the future but right now is that it is it the small sat market that you're really trying to target so for us with go one it's hypersonic flight test QSAT is I think something that's still growing and will come next for us once we get the go one flying for us go one is a pretty interesting business case on its own but it also serves as a risk reduction platform for basically demonstrating the technologies that we need for larger air launch systems capable of getting to orbit whether it be cryogenic propellant management overall operations propulsion development all those things we're able to work out with go one and pave the way for the next step interstellar asks where your launch site is although you know you're an air launch system so your launch sites anywhere you have a runway right potentially potentially so we do we do like to launch from places that have FAA launch licenses or excuse me spaceport licenses so our baseline operations will be Cecil field or Cecil spaceport down in Jacksonville Florida they've had their FAA launch or excuse me again spaceport license for a number of years now so we actually flew one of the go FET flights out of Cecil the first one so it gave them a chance to essentially exercise some of their launch procedures on the ground and in the air so scheduling airspace running out all the safety equipment and so forth so it's a good opportunity to test things that they've done on paper but never really done in real life I bet spaceport America is willing to give you a really good deal right now if you wanted to as well alright just a couple more here a couple more questions before we head back into break one of his held ass asks what kind of customer base did you identify when you're first building up the business plan versus what does the customer base actually look like now that you're actually starting to I know you're only doing captive carry stuff but you know as you're getting closer to go one sure so the customer base originally I think you saw the first growth in small sets and cube sets for the most part coming out of academia and government and I think maybe three or four years ago we really started to see a massive switch to commercial customers whether it be earth observation satellites which I think have been the real first treaders in terms of commercially viable small set constellations whether it's planet or other companies doing different types of earth observation not just remote sensing and then I think you're going to see now going forward we've already started to see this a little bit as well is it transition not so much a transition but a growth toward other segments of the small set market namely for communications so I think you're starting to see a lot more IOT applications and in space communications being developed for small set constellations and cube sets in some cases and then of course you have the big SpaceX and one web internet constellations that are in development so I think a lot of that has continued to drive demand for launch services across the spectrum of payload ranges from five kilograms up to 150 or 200 or so as you mentioned you're designing Go One and they're asking as you're designing that are you designing the engines yourself and if so what fuels will be using that was from Lance sure that's a great question so the fuels are kerosene and liquid oxygen so pretty standard booster type fuels our engine is being developed right now as a small company in Denver called Ursa Major Technologies few folks from Blue Origin started that company a couple years ago and they're developing the first Oxbridge stage combustion engine in quite some time it's called Hadley so that's the engine for Go One it's about 5,000 pounds to us so it sounds like Go One is pretty far along the chain at this point from there we saw kind of Go One but then we also saw that space plane concept the Go Next again that was just conceptual drawing of what it may look like what are the steps to get from Go One to something like that space plane sure so the first thing is learning to fly in the kinds of environments that are necessary to operate those types of high speed point to point systems and that means high Mach number, high dynamic pressure and demonstrating scramjet propulsion or dual mode propulsion whether it's ramjet, scramjet and also getting to the Mach numbers where you can start operating those systems there's obviously turbines and rockets as different ways to get there so being able to demonstrate a fully integrated system that's capable of going from New York to London in minutes instead of hours that's really the next step for us after Go One is doing a small demo I think that encompasses the demonstration of technologies that's necessary to build the commercially viable systems like that. It also looks awesome the Mach up it just looks really cool it looks like the future on the screen right that was the future we were promised in the 60s and 70s it's really awesome looking so yeah go ahead our background you know from spaceworks spaceworks does a lot of conceptual design and we've been working hypersonic systems for 10 or 15 years and it's you know being able to actually be a part of building vehicles and flying them that are actually going to make these types of future vehicles that we've had on our walls for years a reality is really really exciting where can people go for more information on what you guys are doing sure so you can check out our website at generationorbit.com our Twitter feed is usually a little bit more up to date than our website so you can find us at generationorbit and if you ever have any questions or want to ask questions about what we do or come see us in Atlanta just feel free to send an email to info at generationorbit.com that's pretty awesome stuff thank you so much for taking time out of your Saturday to come on the show it's going to be fun to kind of watch a progress of Go One and then up to Go Next and see how things are going for you very good thanks man it's been a pleasure alright we're going to take a quick break and when we come back comments from last week's show stay tuned we'll be right back Patreon plus subscribers easy for me to say these are people contributing $2.50 or more to this specific episode now from this level and above you're going to have access to After Dark immediately you also get a bunch of other perks as you can do each individual level but there is one more level that gets your name in the show and that's our Patreon level that's anywhere between one penny maybe and $2.49 now I'm hearing that Patreon no longer allows you to contribute one penny to a show so I don't know what the new minimums are I'll work on figuring that out but somewhere between one penny and $2.49 is what everyone here did if you'd like more information on our different reward levels and our goals and what we're trying to do head over to patreon.com I hope everyone enjoyed that interview last segment I thought it was really good we were talking during the break they just kind of generation over but I hadn't even really heard of them before and out of nowhere they're already doing captive carry tests that's not really fair but captive carry experiments which is pretty cool so they're actually doing something and they've got their go one that is pretty far along it sounds like 2018 is not that far away and they're very down to earth and I thought it was interesting that the chat rooms asking these questions boom boom boom rapid fire and AJ was able to answer them seamlessly easily they really had their ducks in a row so it was pretty cool all right we were talking about capsule or space plane last week capsule or space plane I don't know first comment comes off of patreon from Jason Hammond and yes I almost said John Hammond I apologize the space where the passenger vehicle has to operate in three different environments the risk management regime of launch the nuance of orbital operations and the toasty descent safety, comfort, affordability thank you no because I go to the Peter Diamandis school of thinking which is which is when given multiple options choose them all so I choose them all I don't think that it has to be done now maybe at first it has to be like that maybe at first it does but I feel like there's a way to engineer around that right and you can with enough time you can get that I don't know how many years now and it still doesn't have any comfort at this point it also doesn't have affordability either let's be fair but it does have safety yay where did my other two go pick any one one example does not make an entire case there one could argue for the space actually right now space travel is not comfortable and that's why while I want to go to Mars I will not be the first one on Mars I'm going to wait for Dave Mastin to build the indoor plumbing for me he's going to make that plumbing for me once he has the plumbing done he's a hyper camper he's not going to build indoor plumbing for you he'll build indoor plumbing for me he loves you just not that much we've got Dave coming on the show in late October I'm going to ask him if he will build like if he'll add that into his business plan build indoor plumbing on Mars for Ben I want to be on camera when I say I bet you his reaction his initial reaction is going to be that's his reaction no and he's not going to anyway, next comment comes off of YouTube this one comes from Gideon Nebelsik Nebelsik Nebelsik says my problem with space planes is that as far as I'm aware none of them have a pad abort capability to survive an AMOS 6 type pad explosion and also they do not have the capability to survive a space transfer system 51L type failure and additionally at any point first and second stage burn during the launch from Cape Canaveral the space plane would have to be capable of RTLS which is return to launch site TAL transatlantic landing abort abort once around and abort to orbit abort once around that's what I've never heard that one or an ATO which is abort to orbit right you got it yes in case of engine failure or performance loss to save the crew since it cannot ditch that would be true of the space transportation system which is traditionally known as space shuttle from NASA you would need those different abort modes because of how it was designed I do not believe you would need all of those abort modes on any space plane though that space plane that you're on would need to be able to safely abort back at any point in project so either you need to abort back to earth or abort to orbit essentially be able to get up into space far enough where you can do something I don't think you actually need all of those different abort modes in traditional you don't have to make the same compromises that the space shuttle made so what Gideon is saying though the difference between the problem that he has presumably with a space plane versus a capsule is that he hated shuttle is that what I'm hearing and the main thing is that the argument of capsules versus space planes is that space planes don't have as many abort capabilities and don't have as many safety features to escape from some sort of accident and one thing that I will say in defense of at least a particular space plane the dream chaser is that for the commercial crew requirements they need to be able to have abort capabilities during all of the sections of launch and for the crew type version the cargo type version would be encapsulated within a payload but the crew type version of their dream chaser would sit on top of the semtar upper stage and actually has engines built into the space plane itself and if needed those would normally be used for all the rendezvous maneuvers that they would do to get to the international space station but if needed they would use the fuel with those built in motors on the dream chaser to have a pusher escape system and escape away from the rocket if anything went wrong during launch so which is how it would be able to survive an AMO6 type anomaly on the pad because it's using those pushers just like you would see a crew dragon vehicle and I'm totally with you there space mic I think dream chaser is an awesome vehicle because it has those abort modes it's a side mounted design it's a top mounted design it's on top of the rocket it can light those engines and I don't think that you need to be able to do you just need to come back safely ultimately is what it comes down to you need to be able to survive you need to be able to survive that's it that's ultimately what it comes down to and you can build a space plane with the capability to survive you don't have to have all these different types of abort modes because that's what NASA did how to survive all these different scenarios if anyone was wondering what STS-51L what mission that was that was the Challenger incident where we lost some astronauts there so that's what Gideon was referring to but in space mic if that were dream chaser instead of shuttle they would have been just fine right did we lose space mic he's he's super like frozen it's kind of creepy actually he's like staring into my soul oh no we lost the space mic we've got a logo to answer for space mic my own question, yeah it would have been just fine why don't you just answer it the way mic would have answered it I don't think I have that much excitement in me though slacker the next comment comes off of YouTube from Methodchus hey guys about alternatives to space planes such capsules to get off the surface orbital attitude and speed how about the airship to orbit idea JP Aerospace is there any chance their idea could work a regular airship to high altitude balloon castle where cargo people are transferred to a high altitude to orbit airship using solar cells and ion thrusters really slow but very energy efficient and potentially low cost to mass space mic, you interviewed John Powell two years ago or so have you had any progress since then yeah space mic let's go to space mic no space mic he's just a he's a logo right now that's so sad actually I'm not familiar with that plan at all are you I'm not either but I think even if you did use a like say a high altitude balloon to get yourself up you're getting altitude but the whole point of getting to orbit is you need to go really really fast sideways so I mean that's the thing that people seem to forget like I think you're going high and you are but you're actually going fast yeah ultimately more than anything else you're going fast not high yeah so I don't know if that idea would I'm not familiar with the idea but it sounds cool though regardless of that I want to go on that trip yeah I just want to I want to go I want to go on a airship just in general that would be awesome yeah I want to take that up to a floating balloon castle also awesome by the way I want to take an airship to a balloon castle when someone says hey what are you doing this weekend I want to say I'm going to go on an airship and get off at a balloon castle that's something I want to do I would love to now I think I have a company idea I think this would be even if you're not going to space the balloon castle of tomorrow the balloon castle of tomorrow I wonder do you yeah and a thousand dollars per episode no it would be more than that I bet do you paint it to look like a like a castle castle though oh you know it's funny so jprospace.com yeah they have a pdf description of their program that they have called ATO abort to orbit airship to orbit airship they are they are reclaiming ATO yep that's three letter acronym they're reclaiming probably not a good idea jprospace I'm hereby requesting that you change that here jprospace please don't use ATO that's not a good idea please community of tomorrow asks you try something else thank you but but airship to orbit yeah I love the I love the idea I think that would be totally fun especially if they get the pricing right right so if they're not charging me ten million dollars to do this if it's if it has to be ten thousand dollars or less ten thousand dollars or less I mean to get on an airship and go to an air a balloon castle a balloon castle I'm doing this this sounds amazing so ATBC right no that's not good either airship to balloon castle no no why not fine how about just project balloon castle that's cool that's cool project balloon castle alright next up balloon castle I just think that's awesome alright well mental note Ben's birthday is January 30 I want a balloon castle that's what I just heard so next one comes off of youtube from Tom Ross space plane versus space capsule shuttle is no longer flying and Soyuz is flying capsules are the way to go the cost of operating a space plane is not worth its special capabilities sear nevada is learning this as we speak but I like the dream chaser that's like the one exception burn man the sick burn yeah I know like I mean generally I'm like yeah space plane is terrible except for dream chaser well because it's all engineering trades right and I think they made really great trades with the dream chaser there are cons to capsules as well but generally speaking you get better engineering trades with capsules than you do with space planes just broad strokes that you're just going to but yeah I don't know I'm not sure that's fair to sear nevada sear nevada I think ultimately they lost out on the the what contract was it the crew commercial crew contract in assa if they had that they'd be in a very different place now yeah right I mean and I'm really sad that they lost that I felt like but whatever I'm not going to comment there but yeah I mean if they had that contract I think they'd be in a really different place I think it's actually a fantastic idea they're really far along and by the way they lost that contract that didn't stop them some other companies would be like up we're out we're not going to do anything anymore they didn't sear nevada was like alright fine let's pivot and refocus and turn it into cargo there's a market for this thing and so they still continue to build it under their own money it's go sear nevada go dream chaser rah rah troubles thank you for that anyway so what did troubles say? next comment comes off of youtube this one comes from Kim Bondergard Bundergard Bundergard yeah hi Kim I'd like to see another segment maybe fit it in after space news where a more focused argument is done like solid versus liquid engines and pros and cons about those I like the topics you have but more focused on the arguments love the discussions you guys have with such a passion I understand the idea it's just we're not focused well that's space pods yeah that is space pods ultimately that's what space pods are for yeah exactly five minute or less focused topics on things although he's saying he wants he wants an argument sure alright solid versus liquid you're wrong although I'm right Jared I'm pointing off camera you can't see me but Jared you're all about liquid and not solid and you well they both have their benefits depending on where you I don't care they all look the same yes directors laughing I know you guys can't hear but Duda is totally laughing and that was worth it just for that the entire space community collectively sighed at that yeah so you and I need to be on camera sometime to have a debate although I feel like we did that do we do that after dark though ding ding ding we need to have like a we need to come and bring facts Duda said do it again and come and bring facts because both of us were just like this is my opinion and that's what happened and we didn't have like a list of like these yeah like it'll be really good yeah no I think that's a good idea yeah I would slaughter you I think there are some arguments that we could have on the show for sure yeah as opposed to round table discussion we might be reinfest in Mars oh Space Mike welcome back Space Mike you know you missed yes and you also missed the what is it there was a comment just for him Space Mike you interviewed John Powell about two years ago so ago have you had any progress since then have they had any progress since then yes they have I mean they launch what they call their Pong Sats all the time which is great because they do it for free and they mostly encourage like elementary school students and stuff like that to submit whatever payload they're going to have I mean it's really cute some kids he said you know they'll like have some candy or like their favorite like little toy that can fit inside of this little ping pong ball and some of them they've been blown away with that actually have like a full blown experiment and have like really teeny tiny solar panels coming out of the outside and little sensors I mean it's still just a really basic thing just being you know lifted up in the atmosphere with the helium balloons but still you know they were very impressed that they've gotten you know actual like scientific experiments from elementary school students they do these Pongs Packs experiments every year they have definitely had a lot of commercial success in the past couple of years putting up certain payloads for companies to advertise to have their advertisements with their whatever their product is floating in space and they've done certain things for different movies for Hollywood there's some JP Aerospace Footage that you've seen in some movies you might not have realized was JP Aerospace Footage but it was and I can't think of the movies off the top of my head but they are I know that their big ambitious plan was to create essentially a giant V-Wing blimp for lack of a better word that would be able to go much higher into the stratosphere being built out of a little bit better material than the normal balloons that they fill helium up with and from there they might even be able to do like some really ambitious raccoon balloon launch type of things but even higher up in having less V requirements although you have the whole velocity argument which our guest on today's show presented really well so you know there's cons and pros to both of that and I do know that JP Aerospace had a test flight of that V-Wing that they were building but other than that I don't know about any other major progress or if they have begun any work with any sort of raccoon experiments launching a rocket off of one of their platforms but most of the work that I've been aware of is their commercial work that they've been doing which I'm sure is going to help fund a lot of their ambitious plans Space Mike this is the most important question I think I've ever asked you do they have a balloon castle a balloon castle have they built a balloon castle yet that's what we're looking for here well if they have I'm sure they haven't told any of us that's fair after watching this show they're like no never let them on our balloons they can't get on the airship and they're not allowed entry into the balloon castle I seriously though I want that balloon castle alright everyone thank you so much for watching that is our show for this week thank you everyone so much for watching next week I believe we have a Swiss space systems on the show that's going to prove to be a very interesting segment so thank you very much and we'll see you next week